Free The Future Is Short by Anthology

tooth, yellowed and curved, wickedly pointed; a tooth for ripping and tearing flesh. He grabbed both teeth, hugged them to his chest. Joyously, he raced and stumbled home, ignoring the risk of another fall, caring not a jot.
    Mom celebrated with him this symbol of a boyhood's ending, and admired his find. She grinned when he begged for an early night, to give the tooth fairy enough time to handle the double donation. Mom kissed him goodnight and gave him a special hug.
    Of course, Bobby couldn't sleep. He could feel the curve of the monster tooth through his pillow. Excitement prodded him to toss and to turn. Excitement made his thoughts churn, made him wonder if the “people” tooth fairy could handle this load, or if the owner had its own tooth fairy; and if so, what the tooth fairy for such a monster would be like. Excitement finally exhausted him, drained him, overfilled his swirling thoughts until his brain closed down and the sleep required by the magical exchange of tooth and coin overtook him.
    Until midnight.
    The noise came to him through his sleep. It was not a natural sound, not a scuffling or a barking or a hooting or a chirruping. It was a thud-thud-thud, it was a roar, it was a splintering of trees. Worst of all, it was approaching, and approaching fast.
    Bobby screamed and leaped from his bed, sweating, trembling. Noise, stench and heat—not of these human lands—embraced, enveloped, engulfed him. Light filled his room, a bright, horrid, sickly-green light; a light that wrapped around his body, rendering him as immobile as if in the grip of vast, powerful jaws.
    His entire being was gripped, shaken, and examined to its very core. He felt his body twisting, turning, turning.
    And with the monster’s tooth fairy came boyhood's end.
     
    Andy McKell is a new writer of speculative fiction, whose short stories are starting to appear in various anthologies. He retired early from the IT world and enjoys acting when he gets the chance. Married with three daughters, all pursuing careers in the visual arts, he currently lives in Luxembourg, Europe. [email protected] http://www.andymckell.com
     
     
     
     

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    23.
    Sting
    Marianne G. Petrino
     
    The droning rulers of summer hibernated. Carried by a light breeze, snowflakes silently drifted across a moonlit, barren field and covered the burrows that gave the enemy refuge from the cold. Summer meant resurrection for the aliens, whose renewed hunger would cull humanity once more in the continuation of their life cycle.
    Miranda rubbed the returning frost from the window with her frayed sleeve. Although hidden by the grey night, the glittering stars of Orion still shone, the symbol of the Women Who Hunted, upon a diminished Earth. In a broken-down garage in what used to be Ishpeming, one of the sticky traps had finally captured a specimen, bringing hope to her drafty cabin.
    The fretful chirp of a battered timer drew her attention to the plastic bottles that gently rotated over pots of boiling water. Duct tape and chicken-wire science now helped secure the possibility of a future. She removed the makeshift spit and studied the cloudy contents. Preparing the injections was an easy task; choosing the vector children would earn her hatred and praise.
    Miranda moved the spit to a wall rack. “Taffy and a corn dog.” She tapped a container that held death, a heartbeat to the lost past. “What I wouldn’t give. . . .” But the pleasures of those easy summers had gone extinct.
    Years back, scientists had worried about the growing numbers of mosquitoes that had carried unprecedented viral threats. Research into insect control had jumped, but the miasma of politics, and the bickering that shaped it, had kept funding limited. Money, and the biological discoveries it bought, could have helped them gain an edge in the beginning of the invasion.
    The absurd stories of alien visitors to the Earth had been true all along. And with a tiny hitchhiker,